XII. Was Grimm wrong in claiming that “Suevi” and “Slavs” Are Cognates?

Jacob Grimm was an excellent linguist. Yet his claim of the two words being cognates is almost embarrassingly swept under the carpet. Brueckner called it “unfortunate”. Curiously, Brueckner did not say that Grimm was wrong (presumably because then he’d have to explain why).

XIII. Why are so many the ancient German river names ending in -awa? and place names in -owa?

XIV. What do the Niemcy have to do with the Nemetes and the Slavs with the Suavi?

There is the old theory about the Slavic word for Germans – Niemcy – being a reference to the Niemcy not speaking Slavic (i.e., the “mutes”) and the Slavs being people of the “word” (slovo), i.e., being the ones who do speak a mutually understandable language. And yet, this theory seems to be based on nothing and to be based on a Volksetymologie.

At the same time the Nemetes just so happened to live right next to the Suevi.

XV. How can Suo-vene/Sla-vene have nothing to do with Vene-ti and nothing to do with Sue-vi either!?

There is a description of a Slav linguist conference where one of the participants raised the Suo-veni and Vene-ti link. The reference to this event goes on to explain that it was quickly explained to the overly curious linguist why he can’t be right. This recollection was brought up by the author of the book presumably to discredit any similar notion.

Yet the remarkable thing is that the book never says what the explanation given to the linguist was!